Posted
by
timothy
on Tuesday June 16, 2009 @12:13PM
from the smashing-darling-smashing dept.

Hugh Pickens writes "NASA is preparing to launch the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, which will fly a Centaur rocket booster into the moon, triggering a six-mile-high explosion that scientists hope will confirm whether water is frozen in the perpetual darkness of craters near the moon's south pole. If the spacecraft launches on schedule at 12:51 p.m. Wednesday, it will hit the moon in the early morning hours of October 8 after an 86-day Lunar Gravity-Assist, Lunar Return Orbit that will allow the spacecraft time to complete its two-month commissioning phase and conduct nearly a month of science data collection of polar crater measurements before colliding with the moon just 10 minutes behind the Centaur." (Continues, below.)

"The cloud from the Centaur rocket booster will kick up 350 metric tons of debris that should spread six miles above the surface of the moon, hitting the sunlight and making it visible to amateur astronomers across North America. Over the final four minutes of its existence, as LCROSS follows the same terminal trajectory as the Centaur, the spacecraft will train its instruments and cameras on the debris cloud, searching it for the chemical signature of water. Previous spacecraft and ground-based instruments have detected signs of hydrogen near the moon's poles, and scientists are split over whether that is from ice that could have arrived through the impact of comets or by other means. Despite all the serious scientific talk about hydrogen signatures and lunar regolith, flying a rocket booster into the moon at 5,600 mph to trigger a massive explosion is just flat-out cool. 'We're certainly going to be making a big splash,' says Kimberly Ennico, the LCROSS payload scientist. 'We're going to see something, but I don't know what to expect. I know on the night of the impact, I'll be running on adrenaline.'"

To anybody who doesn't get this, it's a reference to The Tick [wikipedia.org], a brilliant super-hero/spoof TV animation. In one of the episodes, a super-villain called Chairface Chippendale tries to write his name on the moon. For some reason. I seem to remember that later in the series, you can still see the partially written word "Chairface" in the moon.

My favourite Tick episode is where he gets flu and, for some reason, has to fight a version of himself made out of snot. He wins by snorting it into himself and sneezing it into a dimensional portal. Nice.

My favourite Tick episode is where he gets flu and, for some reason, has to fight a version of himself made out of snot. He wins by snorting it into himself and sneezing it into a dimensional portal. Nice.

I think it was the second episode. Chairface got as far as "CHA" (with rousing cheers from his henchmen in true cheerleader style: "Gimme a C!!") before The Tick's sidekick, Arthur, disabled the device by (iirc) unscrewing the flashlight that powered the laser (new batteries even!). In the rest of the episodes of the season, whenever the moon was visible, you could clearly see "CHA" written on it. In the second season, The Tick was set to the moon to fix it by setting explosives to fill in the craters that formed the letters. He got the "C" cleaned up pretty easily before the world devourer, Galactus -- er, I mean, Omnipotus, shows up and causes trouble. The Tick eventually convinces Omnipotus to leave, but allows the cosmic giant to take a bite out of the moon to tide him over until he can find another planet to eat. Thus, for the rest of season 2 (and sadly, the series), the moon can be seen in the background with the letters "HA" and a big bite out of its side.

They are preparing, apparently, for when we have blown everything up here and need somewhere else to go. But actually I think this is part of NASA's 'constant contact' plan, like the election, when McCain kept saying outrageous stuff just to keep himself in the news. I have been leery of NASA since they did their horrendously offensive dog-and-pony show about the Martian meteorite/life on Mars thing. Does the moon belong to us? Do we have the right to blow it up? It seems like an expensive schoolboy stunt.

I think they are just looking for someplace the US can bomb without getting their Yankee asses kicked (again). Iran and N Korea seem like bad ideas. Afghanistan and Iraq were bad ideas all along. Vietnam and Cuba didn't exactly work out either.Lets hope there aren't little green men because they'd probably kick your ass too.

Oh yea, remember that 2002 or whatever make of The Time Machine? With the fragmented moon? Lets just hope this time it doesn't come crashing down on Earth.

Well, technically it didn't come crashing down on the earth, the explosions they created for the lunar colony caused the moon to drop out of its natural orbit, which in turn has massive gravational effects on earth that more or less started tearing apart the continants, forcing people to make a decision to either try and survive on the surface, or retreat underground for their survival.

Since Satya Harvey is listed as the "SF Astrology Examiner" I think it is likely that she is serious. She also posted a follow up [examiner.com].

In her follow-up, she explains that she does not think that science is the only way that knowledge is revealed to people. She is entitled to her opinion, of course, but that does not mean that we have to agree with or respect it. The beauty of science is that it is something of an amorphous blob. If it turns out that astrology does reveal things about the universe that current science cannot observe, science will hungrily scoop it up and make it a part of itself.

"Step into your fullness - the world needs you to be all you can be. Wake up. You are being called to reconnect with your true self. More then ever before, it is a critical time to follow the feelings already awakening within and realize your greatest potential."

In many traditions, including astrology, the moon represents the feminine. It is the yin, the intuitive, the emotions. Women are connected to the moon by their menstrual cycles while they are fertile, and all beings, including the earth herself, are affected by the pull of the tides.

Ok, she says that to speak with the Moon you just need to quiet your mind and ask it a question. I'll give it a shot.......

Ok, the answer that I got is that the Moon is actually a guy named Bruce who prides himself on being tough. He told me that we should "bring it on" and that he doubts we'd even be able to tickle him. So I think we're good to go.

Um.. Dude, not to make you worry, but Bruce is your next door neighbor's gay cousin and the bring it on was a reference to your sweet ass, not an invitation to fight. I can understand the confusion, your eyes were closed and you were attempting to do the impossible.

Think about it, what self proclaimed bad ass talks about being tickled?

Signed,Your next door neighbor's straight cousin who is embarrassed for the confusion.

Isn't that money being spent on stuff made in the U.S. and paid out to U.S. citizens and workers? It's not a free cash dispersal but this way, it's getting spread among a lot of vendors and suppliers as well as the folks at NASA.

We are in a financial crisis, and the government wants to see if there is ice on the moon? There's plenty on this planet. I can make some for you in my freezer and you can save 20 billion dollars.

Why do you hate science? And, no, I'm not being facetious. Humanity is reaching a potential ceiling on this planet's resources, and you deride efforts to determine whether we can ever get off this rock and sustain ourselves?

The world is always in a crisis...you do realize that most of the world is in poverty....so did that stop us from doing science, plays, movies, theaters, art, sports
So why stop now...because a few people made stupid investments in companies run by more stupid people ?

Well, to start with the mission is costing $78 million, not $20 billion. Second, it costs $100,000 to launch one (1) gallon of water on the Shuttle. Probably closer to $10,000 per gallon on other vehicles; but, we all know the Shuttle is expensive to operate. Even at $10k/gal, that's still a lot of money. So, if we are going to put people on the Moon, it makes no sense, economically, to send them water from Earth. Even in high orbit of Earth, it's likely to be more cost effective, in the long run, to lift water out of the Moon's gravity well than it is to lift water out of the Earth's gravity well. It is clearly the fiscally responsible thing to do.

From TFA, "For Kimberly Ennico, the LCROSS payload scientist, those worries are focused on a critical moment less than two hours into the mission, when controllers will signal the spacecraft to turn itself on."

Shit crashes into astronomical bodies all the time, especially when that body has no atmosphere. But your comment about multiple quantities actually hits close to home for my biggest concern about this experiment. We are supposedly doing this to look for water in a very specific location on a water-scarce body - the moon. Even if this explosion is successful and a detectable plume of water vapour is ejected into space, we will not have proved that there is water at the north pole of the moon - we will only

It's ok to blow things up if you just want to know if "there is water there."

For instance, I just blew up a watermelon 'to see if there was water in there.' It was moist, leading me to believe that there is, in fact, water in there. Then I blew up a junk yard Ford Pinto so I could verify that there was not, in fact, "water in there." As I suspected, there wasn't.

It's ok to blow things up if you just want to know if "there is water there."

For instance, I just blew up a watermelon 'to see if there was water in there.' It was moist, leading me to believe that there is, in fact, water in there. Then I blew up a junk yard Ford Pinto so I could verify that there was not, in fact, "water in there." As I suspected, there wasn't.

The launch has been delayed since Endeavor wasn't able to launch on Saturday as planned. Endeavor is currently slated to launch tomorrow to ISS and a new date hasn't been picked for this mission.Story here [space.com]

(AP) NASA announces that they have discovered that there were in fact trace amounts of ice on the moon.

"We detected a modest amount of water by blowing up a small part of the moon, but is not really sufficient to allow for future use."

Critics argue that NASA may have destroyed the precious lunar water, damaging the lunar system irreparably.

"They blew it up, I tell you. This is a travesty. It's all just testosterone, blowing things up. We thought we were changing away from this white male blowing up the moon business. Now, future life will not be able to evolve on the moon without water.", said the head of the leftist Environmental Action Front.

Other critics disagreed. "Drill, baby, drill", argued the head of the Chamber of Christian Commerce. "There's probably plenty more water on the moon. NASA couldn't have blown it up. It's the moon for Pete's sake...besides, there's no such thing as evolution anyways... "

President Obama's press secretary forgot where he was for a moment, then blamed the launch of the space craft on George Bush.

Dick Cheney replied that blowing up part of the moon was for national security but regretted that there will not be sufficient water to waterboard alien terrorists with.

Aliens from Alpha Centauri expressed their outrage through their ambassadors at Area 51. Ambassador Xwillxiahch told human reporters "First, you shot down our spaceship, after we showed you how to make pyramids, and now you do this. You humans are far too aggressive. We could have told you that there was water on the moon". Are you going to go killed the fish on Europa to see if they are there...oh, there's fish on Europa...didn't know that, did you HUMANS.."

Sure, the LCOSS is intended to crash, but I bet NASA will announce eventually that the probe missed, made a soft landing instead and is now sending data from the surface. Way to lower expectations, guys.

Unless one of those halves goes spinning off somewhere, why would the gravitational pull radically change? It's still the same mass in the same relative position. It would have to be one hell of an explosion to nudge half the moon out of orbit.

Equivalent to 2000 pounds of TNT. That's less than a bunker buster bomb carried by an F15. The moons been hit by stuff a lot more powerful, like the enormous asteroids that made the 1000-mile craters you can see without a telescope.

In other big bangs of note, The US did make two conventional explosions that were bigger (4 kilotons) to try and simulate a small yield nuclear device. Also the British tried to blow up an island (3.2 kilotons).

The US ones were basically Nitrate Fuel bombs, the British one was various old WW2 munitions, Canadian was WW1 munitions. Be interesting to see what you could do with some more high tech stuff.

Look at a picture of the moon. Go on I'll wait.
OK, did you see the craters covering the surface? Look again if you want.
Those are quite big no? In fact, they're bigger than the rocket booster - about half a million of them have diameters bigger than 1km (according to wikipedia). Since not one of those 500,000 (some of which are fairly recent) has had any significant effect on the moons orbit I'd say we're safe.

The mission will supposedly cost $78 million. A lot of money to the average person... but a drop in the bucket compared to the trillions we're wasting on needless wars and bailing out failed banks and automotive companies. Guess which I think is being better spent?